An application of optimal control in medical systems: optimal investment strategy in doctors.

Health care is ever more important with the aging population and with the increased awareness of the importance of the medical systems due to the corona crisis that showed the capacity of the health care infrastructure, especially in terms of numbers of health care personnel such as doctors, was not sufficient. Assuming that the number of doctors per patient is one of the determinants of patient satisfaction, optimal investments in new doctors, specialist doctors and foreign doctors are analyzed. Optimal Control Theory is employed to determine the optimal investment strategy for new doctors (new graduates), specialists and foreign doctors to maximize the net (of costs) patient satisfaction over a fixed time horizon. It is found that a nation with an insufficient number of total doctors and specialist doctors at the beginning of the planning horizon should increase the investment in new doctors as a quadratic function of time, increase the local specialist doctors linearly, while employing foreign doctors as to equate their cost to the marginal satisfaction of patients.

Evaluation of the quality of health and safety services with SERVPERF and multi-attribute decision-making methods.

Evaluating the quality of occupational safety and health (OSH) services by experts is essential for both employee health and workplace productivity. In this study, first, the quality of OSH services is evaluated with a questionnaire using the SERVPERF method. Then, a questionnaire prepared according to the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is applied to OSH experts and the relative importance of the main dimensions and items in the SERVPERF method are determined. The weights of the items in the SERVPERF method are calculated with the AHP and fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). The quality scores obtained by the SERVPERF, AHP and FAHP methods are analyzed comparatively. The results show that the work environment-related measures and physical facilities in the workplaces are more inadequate, whereas assurance and empathy are better. Moreover, the items with the lowest value in the SERVPERF method get the highest score in the AHP and FAHP.

A decision support system for scheduling the shifts of physicians during COVID-19 pandemic.

The rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic has affected many people worldwide. Due to the high infectivity, countries make calls to stay at home or take measures such as lockdowns to ensure that people are least affected by the virus. Meanwhile, infected people are getting treatments: people who are slightly affected are quarantined at home, and those who are heavily affected are treated in hospitals. Hence there is an excessive increase in the hospital workload. This causes physical fatigue in healthcare professionals. Along with the increasing workload, the fear of being infected and infecting the environment causes psychological problems in healthcare professionals. It is important to protect healthcare professionals and provide them with suitable working conditions. For this reason, besides the provision of protective equipment such as gloves, overalls, mask, and glasses that are necessary for the protection of healthcare workers from the virus, healthcare services should also be planned very carefully. One of the critical issues is planning the shift schedules of the physicians. In this study, we handle the preparation of a physician shift schedule of a hospital in Turkey during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hospital has established three new COVID-19 related departments and the aim is to provide continuous service in the new departments while maintaining the workload in the existing departments. We propose a mixed integer programming (MIP) model to address the shift scheduling problem and transform it into a decision support system (DSS). The resulting schedules minimize the exposure of the physicians to the virus with a balanced workload while maintaining the healthcare service in all departments.